Glendon author Ruth Snyder’s story was released on Dec. 4. It is currently available on Kobo and will be out in print in the New Year.

Snyder, who has had articles published in Testimony, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and FellowScript magazine, said the story is about a girl who turns down her boyfriend’s marriage proposal to go overseas to help at a medical clinic.

“He can’t forget her and she can’t forget him,” noted Snyder.

She used the years she and her family spent in the past in South Africa and Botswana as reality background for the story. Historical events played a role, too, especially the discovery, in the early part of this century, of a cache of diamonds in Botswana, resulting in the forced eviction of people in the area. For example, in the novella, Cecile is told she has one day to pack up and get out of the clinic.

Snyder said she has always enjoyed writing, a pleasure that came with the exercise of letter-writing skills when her family lived in Africa.

“The only way of contact was through letters, so I learned to describe what was happening,” she said.

Then, several years ago, Snyder competed in a contest called Fiction in Five, in which writers were given a prompt on Monday and asked to use it to write a story by Friday.

“One of the prompts was ‘Christmas in the desert is so boring,’” she said, adding that’s the summer season over there.

“We used to eat watermelon and go swimming on Christmas Day.”

Snyder knew in August she would have to have “Cecile’s Christmas Miracle” written by Nov. 1.

“I wrote most of it in October,” she commented.

Snyder is currently at work on a full-length novel called Olga’s Discovery, a Canadian-based mystery dealing with a woman whose fiancé passes away – or may not have, as the case may be.

Snyder said her editor “is waiting for the first 20,000 words of (that) novel and she’ll give me a contract if she likes what she sees.”